Gov. Gerald L. Baliles has requested $438,000 for the State Water Board to add workers and increase its veto power over federal permits issued to people who want to fill inland wetlands.

The strategy aims at using existing federal legislation to control the destruction of marshy lands, rather than drafting a state law. Virginia has regulated building on tidal wetlands since 1972, but there are no state laws to protect inland, non-tidal wetlands.

Virginia's original non-tidal wetlands bill, which failed to make it through the legislature, set forth more strigent guidelines for protecting inland wetlands and would have affected farmers as well as builders.

Under the 1977 Clean Water Act, states do have the power to block federal permits to fill marshy land if that filling harms water quality in nearby streams, creeks and rivers.

Draining, ditching, clearing and conversion of wetlands to farm land is allowed. Wetlands smaller than one acre also are exempt.

The permits, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, are needed by anyone who wants to fill a wetland. If a developer wants to build a subdivision on 100 acres of land, some of which is wetlands, he needs a permit.

But the same developer can drain and farm the land, still destroying the wetlands.

Bruce Williams, chief of the permit section for the Army Corps Norfolk office, said last year his department received 771 applications that involve filling wetlands. Those permit applications are sent to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. VMRC, acting as a clearing house for the state, sends permits to state agencies for review.

Under the new system, water board employees will review all Corps permits before they are sent to VMRC, said Bernard Caton, the board's deputy executive director for policy.

The water board will add six employees to the two-member staff currently assigned to review federal permits.

Caton said the presence of wetlands does not rule out building on a piece of property. One alternative, he said, is for the developer to create an acre of wetland for each acre destroyed. Another is to cluster building on the part of land that is not wetlands.

Buddy Spencer, a local developer and chairman of the non-tidal wetland committee for the Peninsula Housing and Builders Association, said those suggestions are not always practical. The cost of replacing an an acre of wetlands for each acre destroyed can be prohibitive, he said.

"Clustering could work if you have the luxury of owning 300 acres of land. But in many cases you might not be able to do that," he said.

A study commission is expected to be appointed to consider legislation for the 1990 General Assembly.

Leo C. Snead Jr., staff scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said stricter state laws are necessary because the federal laws do not oversee most activities that destroy wetlands.

Most wetlands are lost to agriculture or urbanization.

Carlton Courter, president of the Virginia Agribusiness Council, said farmers are not likely to drain inland wetlands because they would lose their federal subsidies on some crops under the swamp-buster provisions of the 1985 Food Security Act.

"For any farmer to survive, it is key to be a part of these federal programs," Courter said.

A wetland is a special type of land: it must have special soil, it must support special types of plants, and it must be saturated with water during certain times each year.

The governor is also asking for $317,000 to determine where Eastern Virginia's non-tidal wetlands are. The money would be used to gather and update existing information.

Both appropriations are included in amendments he has proposed to the state's 1988-90 budget.